I replaced a buggy Windows Vista installation with Ubuntu. All works fine except that the main HD where I had all my files are now inaccessible. Here is the error message I get:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details

Is it necessarily a hardware problem? If not, is there a way to repair the HD from Ubuntu?

4 Answers
4

chkdsk /R is a pretty important command when things get hairy with NTFS. Unfortunately I don't know of a Linux tool that comes close to covering everything it does. In short, to run it, you're going to need some sort of Windows recovery disk.

You could install VirtualBox and an XP on it. Prevent the drive mounting in fstab, (if USB mount: add the USB filter in VBox so that XP sees the "raw" USB drive), mount the drive on XP and run chkdsk on it.
–
ring0Jan 6 '14 at 2:46